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A year earlier than this Dali had "suddenly, as most of my ideas occur" flung another
little boy off a suspension bridge. Several other incidents of the same kind are recorded, including
(this was when he was twenty-nine years old) knocking down and trampling on a girl "until they had
to tear her, bleeding, out of my reach."
When he is about five he gets hold of a wounded bat which he puts into a tin pail. Next
morning he finds that the bat is almost dead and is covered with ants which are devouring it. He puts
it in his mouth, ants and all, and bites it almost in half.
When he is adolescent a girl falls desperately in love with him. He kisses and caresses
her so as to excite her as much as possible, but refuses to go further. He resolves to keep this up for
five years (he calls it his "five year plan"), enjoying her humiliation and the sense of power it gives
him. He frequently tells her that at the end of five years he will desert her, and when the time comes
he does so.
Till well into adult life he keeps up the practice of masturbation, and likes to do this,
apparently, in front of a looking-glass. For ordinary purposes he is impotent, it appears, till the age of
thirty or so. When he first meets his future wife, Gala, he is greatly tempted to push her off a
precipice. He is aware that there is something that she wants him to do to her, and after their first kiss
the confession is made:
"I threw back Gala's head, pulling it by the hair, and, trembling with complete
hysteria, I commanded,
"'Now tell me what you want me to do with you! But tell me slowly,
looking me in the eye, with the crudest, the most ferociously erotic words that can
make both of us feel the greatest shame!'
"...Then, Gala, transforming the last glimmer of her expression of
pleasure into the hard light of her own tyranny, answered,
"'I want you to kill me!'"
He is somewhat disappointed by this demand, since it is merely what he wanted to do
already. He contemplates throwing her off the bell-tower of the Cathedral of Toledo, but refrains from
doing so.
During the Spanish civil war he astutely avoids taking sides and makes a trip to Italy. He
feels himself more and more drawn towards the aristocracy, frequents smart salons, finds himself
wealthy patrons, and is photographed with the plump Vicomte de Noailles, whom he describes as his
"Maecenas." When the European war approaches he has one preoccupation only: how to find a place
which has good cookery and from which he can make a quick bolt if danger comes too near. He fixes
on Bordeaux, and duly flees to Spain during the Battle of France. He stays in Spain long enough to
pick up a few anti-red atrocity stories, then makes for America. The story ends in a blaze of
respectability. Dali, at thirty-seven, has become a devoted husband, is cured of his aberrations, or
some of them, and is completely reconciled to the Catholic Church. He is also, one gathers, making a